It had seemed that the project had stalled out after two figures were released and then they started making headmasters, but it's back on again and looks rather nice. I am okay with this and hope to see it completed.

Hmm. Well, it has to do with how the legs are formed, too. In the case of Hercules, Bonecrusher and Scavenger have their legs at full length under the vehicle, so they don't have to shorten down. Superion and this Bruticus, however, all have their legs telescope up/down to make their alternate modes. Since their legs are already at the minimum horizontal width for the vehicle mode, they can't have an extra swivel in the hips like Hercules' has that leaves the combined mode's elbows flush.

But some companies have overcome it... the Maketoys Computron has little panels with pistons that fit over the elbow gaps. I don't know if they're part of the figure folded out or just orphaned pieces that fit into the gestalt and do nothing otherwise, though.

Phone pics I took without flash didn't really come out, so will spare you those, but saw the prototype earlier today and it does make for a nicely detailed deluxe class figure. Will probably get one to go with Jumpstarters and Lost Light crew rather than with larger Wreckers.

Yeah. This describes a good 90% of the third-party robots out there, IMO. A lot of designers seem to think that including as much surface detail and greebles as possible into a design is the way to make things look good. Most of them look like something designed by a first-year design student trying to show off how they've mastered CAD software by cramming in as much as they can on a design, without stopping to ask whether they should. The end result just looks busy though, with none of the artistry that a really good toy sculpt should have.

The other 10% can produce some really nice toys (like that Slag everyone's been raving about -- they did a beautiful job making it look like an official MP) but I don't think Impactor here is one of them. Honestly, I think I liked the prettied-up Generations Warpath bootleg that iGear teased a couple years ago better.

Just a quickie; one of the (no-photo) reveals at the AA 3P panel yesterday was the rumoured MMC Turmoil remould into Impactor, large voyager scale. Some of the presentation slides have now been shared. It'll be coming with a harpoon as well as the drill pictured.

On the plus side, leg guns.
But am I the only one thinking how stupid it is to have to release an 'upgrade kit' to fix a pretty blatant design mistake, which also throws off the proportions of the figure?